Chi - Alexander Besher

It is the year 2038. Wing Fat, head of a South-east Asian biotech drug cartel, is siphoning off vital chi essence from enslaved humans held on plantations in the former Golden Triangle. And bootleg chi products are flooding the world's black markets, offering global consumers everything they have always craved: super-enhanced intelligence, greater creativity, heightened sexual powers, multimedia implants and even short-term immortality.

If you can afford it, you can have it. But even the 650-pound chi-godfather Wing Fat, who is having an affair with his intelligent elevator, can't have everything. It is up to Frank and Trevor Gobi, the father and son team of virtual reality investigators, to make sure of that.

As always with Alexander Besher, the book is crammed with big ideas and big characters and confirms his status as one of the most exciting and innovative SF writers to have emerged for many years.